Space



Europe’s historic search for life on Mars is set to take off on Monday as a heavy-lift Russian rocket blasts into space from Kazakhstan.

An artist impression issued by the European Space Agency of the separation of the payload fairing during the ExoMars 2016 launch sequence.

An artist impression issued by the European Space Agency of the separation of the payload fairing during the ExoMars 2016 launch sequence. Image by David Ducros/ESA/PA Wire

The Proton rocket will launch the first of two ExoMars missions, together costing 1.2 billion euro (£924 million), designed to uncover signs of past or present life on the Red Planet. An orbiter carried on the ExoMars 2016 mission will hunt for methane in the Martian atmosphere and show if it is likely to have been generated by geology or biological processes.

Europe's historic search for life on Mars is set to take off on Monday as a heavy-lift Russian rocket blasts into space from Kazakhstan.

Europe’s historic search for life on Mars is set to take off on Monday as a heavy-lift Russian rocket blasts into space from Kazakhstan. Image by Boris Bethge/ESA/PA Wire

Then in two years’ time, ExoMars 2018 will send a British-built rover bristling with cutting- edge technology to Mars. Equipped with a drill that can burrow deep below the radiation-baked Martian surface, it will look for the chemical fingerprints of life.

If the scientists find evidence of life – even primitive life that existed billions of years ago – it will be one of the biggest discoveries of all time. Humanity will have to re-assess its place in the universe, just as it did when Copernicus showed that the Earth and its sister planets orbited the Sun.

While American rovers have paved the way by investigating whether the Martian environment is or ever was suitable for living microbes, none of them has been equipped to search for life itself.

The Proton rocket will launch the first of two ExoMars missions, together costing 1.2 billion euro (£924 million), designed to uncover signs of past or present life on the Red Planet.

The Proton rocket will launch the first of two ExoMars missions, together costing 1.2 billion euro (£924 million), designed to uncover signs of past or present life on the Red Planet. Image by Anneke Le Floc’h/ESA/PA Wire

Planetary scientist Dr Peter Grindrod, from Birkbeck, University of London, who is funded by the UK Space Agency, said: “It’s incredibly exciting. This is a series of missions that’s trying to address one of the fundamental questions in science: is there life anywhere else besides the Earth? Finding that life exists elsewhere in the solar system would be a huge discovery, so the evidence has to be strong. As they say, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”

The ExoMars missions are being undertaken jointly by the European Space Agency (Esa) and Russian Federal Space Agency, Roscosmos. Monday’s launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome will send two unmanned probes on a journey across space lasting seven months. One Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) will sniff the Martian atmosphere in search of methane, water vapour and other trace gases.

The other, Schiaparelli, is a lander whose primary job is to undertake a trial run of the parachute and retro-rocket technology needed for the later rover mission. Methane is quickly broken down by sunlight and has to be continually regenerated from some source to persist in a planet’s atmosphere.

On Earth the primary source is life. Billions of microbes, including many that thrive in the guts of animals such as cattle and termites, belch out the gas. But methane can also be released by volcanic activity and geological chemistry.

European Space Agency's artist's impression of the ExoMars 2016 fourth stage separation during it's launch sequence.

European Space Agency’s artist’s impression of the ExoMars 2016 fourth stage separation during it’s launch sequence. Image by ESA/PA Wire

TGO is equipped to look for methane hotspots on the Martian surface, and using highly sensitive instruments, test whether it is likely to be the product of biology or geology.

The orbiter also carries a high resolution colour 3D camera called CaSSIS (Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System) that can snap photos of surface objects as small as 15 to 20 metres across.

CaSSIS will look ahead and behind the spacecraft to build up stunning 3D maps of craters, mountains, dunes and other surface features. Dr Grindrod said: “We can definitely expect some spectacular pictures.”

The ExoMars 2016 spacecraft composite during the final stages of encapsulation.

The ExoMars 2016 spacecraft composite during the final stages of encapsulation. Image by Boris Bethge/ESA/PA Wire

Scientists will need to be patient. Although the TGO is due to reach Mars in October, it will have to undergo a lengthy series of orbital manoeuvres before the five year scientific mission can begin in December 2017.

 

(Press Association)